


I get drunk but its not enough cos the morning comes and you’re not my baby

by T3RRIBL3T1GG3R



Category: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Genre: Angst, Developing Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Period-Typical Racism, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-08-25
Packaged: 2020-09-26 17:14:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20393254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/T3RRIBL3T1GG3R/pseuds/T3RRIBL3T1GG3R
Summary: This got stuck in my head after watching the film again and wouldn't leave me alone so I thought why not :)Mostly dealing with Phillips thoughts after the fateful theatre disaster.





	I get drunk but its not enough cos the morning comes and you’re not my baby

**Author's Note:**

> Not mine, I'm just playing with 'em and I promise to put 'em back after.

_I get drunk but its not enough cos the morning comes and you’re not my baby. ~ Taylor Swift - Death by a thousand cuts._

She leaves him. He bared his soul to her, begged her not to deny what they both knew to be true and she left him.

He wants to say it surprises him, wants to deny the pain it causes him to watch her walk away from. It would be a lie though. He’s been told his whole life he’s not good enough, he watched his parents walk away and leave him so many times that by the age of four he expected _not _to see them each day, watched the nannies he had loved torn away from him, their only crime being the love and affection they gave a love starved child. After the third nanny he stopped getting attached, they only left if he did.

And so when he allows himself to love her, dares to admit this truth and she walks away he’s not surprised. It is after all following the script his life has abided by for as long as he can recall. It reminds him once again that people shouldn’t be allowed to get close to him, that perhaps it’s his curse in life to always be alone, always feel the dull ache when he sees couples in love in the street. He thinks though as he squares his shoulders and pulls his mask back into place, that this is the first time he’s allowed someone to keep their hold of his heart and take it with them as they walk away. The tears that course down his face are ignored as he watches her until she’s out of sight.

He expected the pain to fade in time, but this is where he does get a surprise. He hadn’t truly taken into account what the effect of seeing her everyday, watching her take his heart when she left after every rehearsal would do to him. His parents hadn’t kept his heart when they constantly left him all those years ago and so he’s not really prepared for the feeling of only being able to breathe in her presence only too start drowning again when she leaves.

She’d asked him when they first where introduced what his act was, he’d been stumped back them, unsure himself of his place in this strange new world, knowing only that a vision of purple sequins and pink hair had taken his ability to breathe upon his first glimpse and his ability to function when she spoke to him. He’d almost and actually walked into way too many walls and doors in those first few weeks when he’d caught a glimpse of her passing him by.

As they days turned into weeks and he has to watch her everyday, be near her but unable to touch her, he figures it out. His act is the one he’s been performing all his life. He remembered when he had realised he needed his act, a five year old version of himself trying not to cower I fear after making the fatal error of calling his nanny ‘mommy’ in front of his mother. The nanny had known before he had finished the sentence what the consequences would be for his slip of the tongue. He could still remember the sting and the heat radiating in his cheek after his mother had backhanded him, still remember the metallic taste of blood in his mouth as his teeth cut his mouth from the force of the blow and how his mothers ring cut his lip. The blood had made a path down his chin and his father who had entered the room as the blow struck, merely told him to clean his face before he dripped blood on the new rug. He remembered more vividly the look of sadness mingled with the ever present warmth of love shining in his nannies eyes, she knew what was to come. She held him close that night as she rocked him to sleep and murmured words of love that he would hold close in the following months. He cried silently (another lesson learned at the hands of his mother) at the window of his locked room the next day, his hands pressed to the glass as his nanny walked away. The look of sorrow on her face as she turned and gazed at the forlorn figure he cut at his window, before she entered the carriage stayed with him even years later.

After that day, the moment he showed any attachment to a nanny would result in their departure and a new set of scars to line his small back for daring to forget his station and caring for the help. His mask was firmly in place by then, inside he cried and mourned for those who left him by his parents hand but on the outside he was indifferent, his mask perfectly emotionless by the time he was seven and nanny number three had left after his mother caught him giving the woman a hug in thanks for a gift.

So yes, he had an act, no matter how broken he was inside he carried on with a mask of indifference on his face. He hid the pain and showed the world an act of a man who was happy, even when he wasn’t.

When he’d met her ha’d let his mask slide for the first time since he was a child, his walls had lowered enough for her to lodge herself in his heart. He’s not surprised when it all falls apart, the symmetry is familiar, right down to the reason she’s walking away. He dared to care for her and his parents appeared as if they had sensed that their eldest son had dared to care for someone ‘below his station’. The end result mirrored his childhood perfectly and he watched her walk away again after he had chased her and tried to make her see. The tears had coursed silently as he watched her go and his walls shot back up as his mask slammed back into place. Inside the empty place where his heart should be ached and he had known then that this would make the pain of his childhood insignificant.

He tries to numb the pain with cheap whiskey, a far cry from the single malt he had enjoyed before he ran away and joined the circus, before that fateful evening at the theatre where he told them all the things he had held bottled inside when they called the only woman he would ever love ‘the help’. He saw red that night and despite the manners his father had quite literally beaten into him, he had let it all out and caused a scene.

When he got the letter from his fathers solicitor a few days later informing him that he had been disinherited (he kept the apartment as it was in his name) he’d laughed, a hollow sound, in the end he’d felt relief that he would never again have to deal with them. He didn’t want or need their money and he definitely didn’t need them. He threw the letter in a drawer as he laughed again at the reasons they had listed for the course of action they had taken. He would take his ‘mulatto help’ over them any day. He didn’t care, he would do it all again if he had to, because for a few minutes, a few magical minutes he’d got to escort Anne to the theatre, to feel the warmth of her hand on his arm, to know that he was close enough to feel her warmth and smell that scent that was uniquely Anne. It only made him want her more, she’d walk past him and his chest would ache as he caught the familiar scent that was Anne and remembered the feel of her small hand in the crook of his arm. He wanted more.

The thugs got bolder and bolder in their protests and moves against them and he knew that the storm was brewing but he just couldn’t bring himself to fully face it. He was lost in his pain, trying to convince himself that he could survive and he would be okay, that just seeing her each day was enough, sometimes he even believed the lies he told himself.

And then the storm came rushing in, a roaring inferno that blazed through the circus. The world shrunk to a pinpoint when W.D. was unable to tell him where Anne was and he realised she was still trapped in the building. His only thought as he ran back into the inferno was nonononononono not Anne. The flames roared around him as the building burnt down and as he dodged the falling flaming debris he realised that the circus had become his home, the people his family and Anne, sweet Anne would alwayshold his heart in her tiny hands and he wouldn’t have it any other way. The beam fell and his last scream as it knocked him to the floor and it became harder to breathe was for Anne. As the darkness took him, his last thought was that he’d been wrong when he thought that her leaving with his heart was the worst pain he’d ever felt, the realisation that he’d failed her took pain to a whole new level.

He comes to in the hospital with a hand holding his. He recognises the scent he associates with Anne and wonders if he’s dead or being haunted by her ghost. He knows that he didn’t save her and he feels the weight of that knowledge settle on his chest. The hand holding his squeezes and his surroundings come back into focus as he opens his eyes and sees Anne sat there holding his hand like a lifeline. The sight of her face, so loving and more open than he’s ever seen causes his breathe to catch.

When her lips touch his, he thinks he might be in heaven and he kisses her back as his walls crumble to dust and his mask falls away. They were built from the pain of loved ones leaving and as he deepens the kiss and loses himself in mapping out her mouth he marvels in the fact that although she may have walked away like all the others she did what they had never been able to do. She came back and with her return he found he was no longer in need of masks and walls to protect him.

But he was in need of a new act.

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first attempt at this fandom and I hope you liked it :)


End file.
